Fish Fear Me

Happy Thanksgiving

Here's wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving.

Mom had kind of a tough year on the health front, but she's recovered nicely and was able to travel to New York to be with the East Coast contingent of the family today. This holiday finds our family healthy and whole and I'm very thankful for that.

I'm also thankful for those Americans, military and civilian, who are serving overseas and are away from their families today. Their sacrifices, and those of their families, are a huge reason we have much to be thankful for in this often brutal world.

This has been a tough year for me in some ways. Losing Sammy was a blow. Business has been awful and like many people, my financial situation has worsened this year. I've been very frustrated with our software provider for Keepsilks and our inability to get improvements done and fix known issues, to the point of almost slipping into depression again. It's been that toxic to me. I truly understand now why they say that 90% of new businesses fail. Barring winning the lottery, it is very much uncertain what I will be doing or where I will be a year from now.

But you know what? I feel good right now. For the last few months I've been looking at replacement software and website developers and while most people are hunkering down, I think we'll double-down. It has been reinvigorating to back away from the arguments and the "you can't" and get back into imagining the possible. It will make the next month brutally busy, but I think that will be in a healthy way.

It's a risk and I may fail again. But the other edge of that sword is opportunity.

And I'm very grateful today to have that.

Hide The Decline

There's actually a serious issue here, but this is pretty funny:

(Minnesotans for Global Warming)

(Via Watts Up With That)

Minor Miracle

This weekend's FFL opponent was the division leader and I was one game behind him in the standings. I was up 35-28 going into last night's Tennessee-Houston game, but I was done and my opponent had Tennessee running back Chris Johnson going. Those who follow fantasy football know why I figured my goose was cooked, but for those who don't, Johnson had rushed for over 100 yards(3 bonus points in our scoring) his previous four games and had scored two touchdowns in each of the last three games. The dude has been on fire. His FFL points contribution those three weeks? 15, 15, 18.

Well, he ran for 151 yards last night but by some miracle he didn't get in the end zone. Those three points weren't enough for my opponent and so we are tied for first with two games left. What could be key is that I now own the tie-breaker over him since I have beaten him twice this year. There are two teams in our division that are just one game back though, so it truly is up in the air. The other division is pretty much the same way, but with one team in first and three more just one game back. In the 15 years or so that this league has been around I don't think I've ever seen that kind of parity.

I'm also glad to avoid what could have been a little controversy. We went online with the league last year, but one of the rules we retained was that you still had to call your opponent(or email) with your lineup. My opponent got 6 points from Steve Smith on Thursday night, but he never let me know that he intended to play him. Had Chris Johnson scored a TD last night those points would have mattered and I would have faced a dilemma: Do I cry foul to the commissioner? Or do I just let it go, since he probably would have started him anyway? The unfair advantage here is that if Smith had not scored on Thursday, my opponent could have claimed he didn't intend to play him and put another receiver in his place. Oh, and my opponent is the commissioner's son. The commish is a fair guy, but that would put him in a tough spot.

Going into last night my inclination was to let it go, but point out that this is the kind of thing that can lead to some hard feelings and split a league into factions. The other teams in my division also had an interest in seeing me knock off the division leader, it wasn't just me. If I were to let it go I might also be screwing them over, though they may not have found out.

I don't think my opponent was trying to game things, he's a pretty good kid I think, he was just a little sloppy with the rules. I'm glad that it's not an issue this morning, but I'm still going to point it out to him.

Monday Morning Notes

It's kind of wet and dreary today, but temps hit the 50s both days this weekend. That will probably be the last weekend for that until late April or May. Bye-bye 50s. I'll miss you.

My mom finally has a new pc at home and broadband internet service. Minneapolis has 3MB service under $20/month and I was there when they did the install. She's actually getting around 5MB up and down at this point. Now I'm wrestling with getting all of her files and pics transferred from the old Windows 98 machine to her new one. It is, of course, a pain in the ass.

Today at 2:00 P.M. Eastern the American League MVP will be announced. The general consensus is that it will go to the Twins' Joe Mauer and I think that's appropriate given his batting title, gold glove play at catcher, and his leadership on the team. There are certainly other worthy players out there, I just think Mauer was the best of the best this past year. I understand that Yankees fans want to see Jeter get it, but this kind of cracked me up:

Fortunately, the New York media haven’t been fanning the flames of the myopic — at least according to my Google checking — although there was a reference in an mlb.com story noting that no Yankee has won a major post-season award since A’Rod “took home the MVP in 2007.” It’s going on two years now. Maybe ESPN can fix that.

Two whole years. And I don't think ESPN came to the rescue this year. New York fans will most likely have to settle for that World Series title this year. So sad.

It was a nice win for the Vikes yesterday against a banged up Seahawks club. The Vikes were expected to dominate and they did. There is still some room for improvement, but they played very well yesterday compared to their sloppy return from the bye week the Sunday before. Favre looked outstanding again and was able to leave the game after his fourth TD and give Tarvaris Jackson some reps. Even Jackson looked pretty good yesterday, going 6 for 8 including a TD. The defense only gave up 4 yards rushing, 4 yards! And look at the time of possession: 42:11 versus Seattle's 17:49. Yowza.

I have to give a lot of credit to Brett Favre and Brad Childress. There is none of the circus atmosphere and frustration that everyone saw in New York last year. I fully expected Favre to bring at least some of that with him if he came to the Vikes and it was a prime reason that I was unenthusiastic about him arriving here. But we've seen none of that from Favre this year. None. He has been a solid leader and team player, doing exactly what the Vikes have needed to be a serious playoff contending team.

Let's also give Brad Childress and his group of coaches a shout out. Right now they are making the adjustments that are needed during the game and making good play calls. I haven't been a big fan of Childress in the past, but so far this season he is doing just about everything right, and it's only proper to give him the credit he deserves.

I Smell Smoke

I saw this via Mr. Bingley this morning, and it has the potential to rock the political world:

Hackers have broken into the data base of the Hadley GRU unit - one of the world’s leading alarmist centres - and put the files they stole on the Internet, on the grounds that the science is too important to be kept under wraps.

The ethics of this are dubious, to say the least. But the files suggest, on a very preliminary glance, some other very dubious practices, too, and a lot of collusion - sometimes called “peer review”. Or even conspiracy.

A warning, of course. We can only say with a 90 per cent confidence interval that these emails are real.

The caution that this is all unconfirmed is one we should pay heed to. However, I downloaded the entire file this morning and took a look at some of those emails. If this is a hoax, somebody spent a hell of a lot of time setting it up. Many of the emails contain complete headers and details that can be easily checked, including message IDs that investigators can use to find emails or see if they have been deleted. There is plenty of evidence available to quickly confirm or debunk these emails.

This is a huge moment of truth for the mainstream media. If organizations like The New York Times or WaPo ignore or fail to at objectively investigate this story they will prove that they are absolutely worthless in providing the essential information that the public needs to make informed decisions. I think we should see how things work out before rendering judgment, but this is one hell of a lot of smoke.

Commonplace Book Day

It's Commonplace Book Day at Sheila's blog, something she does a few times a year and one of my favorites. Lots of great quotes with a solid mix of insight, wisdom, and humor. I don't see a category to link to, but for today you can hit the main page and keep scrolling. Or you can hit this one and just keep working back. Good stuff.

It Took Awhile, But I Finally Got It

About two months ago I had a problem pop up with my home pc where it would hang on boot up. No matter which method I tried to use, it would always hang after or while trying to load a file named agpcpq.sys. I was working off of my laptop for awhile and was kind of afraid that I was going to have to flatten the damn box and reload XP. I have most of my stuff backed up to CD, but there were some recent pics and docs I would have lost and it's just a royal pain in the neck anyway. 

So a couple of weeks ago I gave it a shot again and found success. I can't say it will work for everyone because none of the other fixes I found worked for me and none of them said to do what I did, but this appears to have worked for me. Why the problem occurred in the first place and why the following worked for me I'm not sure. If someone finds this post while searching for a solution, here's mine and good luck.

I had secured both an original XP SP2 CD and a Dell reinstallation CD, having foolishly not created my own recovery CD(since addressed). Booting to either CD would still hang at the same spot. On a whim, I unplugged the pc and removed the Radeon graphics card that I had installed years ago and tried another boot from the Dell CD. Lo and behold, it booted to safe mode. Through control panel I then completely uninstalled the Radeon card and rebooted successfully in normal mode. A little bemused, but happy, I shutdown the pc and reinstalled the video card(don't forget to unplug the pc). The pc rebooted successfully and appears to be back to normal now.

I credit my IT brilliance. The chicken, the candles, and the pentagram were merely coincidental.

The Gamble

The decision to try five members of al Qaeda in a New York federal court while sending five others before a military commission somewhere has me a bit puzzled. I suspect that it is another victory for wishful thinking over common sense for this administration. And maybe also the inevitable result of eight years of intellectual dishonesty and moral weakness about  distinguishing between civilians, soldiers, and illegal combatants, and the state of international law regarding parties in violent conflict.

President Obama, and make no mistake, this was his decision and he owns it, is gambling his Presidency that:

1. There will be no terrorist attacks in New York City during the trial. The possibility exists that al Qaeda would attack New York during a military commission trial in Guantanamo, but I don't think President Obama could be blamed for that. By staging the trial in New York though, he has actually provided an incentive for al Qaeda to strike while the world's attention is focused there. If the bastards want to ensure he is a one-term president they will strike in some fashion then, because a large percentage of Americans will blame Obama for setting up the likelihood of that particular disaster, including me.
2. Attorney General Holder appears confident that a case can be made against the five that will not compromise intelligence methods, nor put the judiciary in a position of having to choose between excluding evidence or setting precedents that diminish our own civil rights. I hope so. I don't have the legal background or the access to the information that Holder has to assess whether his confidence is misplaced. All I can say for sure is that a diluting of our rights under the guise of the necessity to prosecute foreign terrorists will be unacceptable to me and millions of Americans in no uncertain terms. That result would put the nation on very dangerous grounds.
3. The odds are that this trial is going to be a media circus. Any number of nations and groups will have all sorts of incentives to create incidents and issues that can quickly spin out of the control of the administration. Do they have any idea what kind of information ops arena they are setting up? Will they be ready for it? Maybe, but right now I'm skeptical. And once again is this another area where we may see compromise, this time by major American media outlets, that sets dangerous precedents regardless of which party is in charge?

The larger fail over the last eight years has been in how we view the various parties in a conflict. The world consensus that was built in the wake of WWII is not just broken now, it is shattered. The victims of this are primarily the innocent civilians in areas of conflict, but they are also the soldiers who strive to fight in ways that protect the rights of non-combatants in their area of operations. Our failure, our unwillingness, to discern the difference between the types of combatants in the world today is killing innocent civilians while allowing moral midgets, who at best appear to look good in suits on various talk shows, to drone on about how "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

That's just bullshit.

There's no escaping that we as a society, and western civilization as a whole, have made a complete muddle of that though. Mostly in the service of political ideology at the expense of integrity I think. More on that aspect later.

Hey, It's A Valid Question

My friend Mark emailed me the following pic that was captioned as "How to spot a guy from Wisconsin with a DUI conviction."

Exit question: Given the known proclivities of some Cheeseheads as reported in the media a few years ago, was he deer hunting or is that his date?

Monday, Monday

Well, I finally have most of the yard work that needed to get done, done. There are a few more things to mess around with, but if the snow flies now and sticks I'm not going to worry about them. They will be there next spring. I've also been in something of a funk the last week. One of the reasons for that has been how surreal politics and current events seem right now. I mean, there are always absurdities around, but they are coming fast and furious these days. The other day somebody linked that clip from "The Shining" where the wife finds the manuscript and discovers ream after ream of paper that just repeats the line, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", over and over. If I wrote about politics right now, you just might get page after page of "That's absurd", over and over. Blech.

Another thing is that my sleep patterns are all screwed up. I've been waking up at 3:00 a.m. and then tossing and turning until I give up and make coffee. I hate being awake at that time of night. Everything looks like shit.

The Vikes got a win over Detroit yesterday, but it was pretty sloppy. 13 penalties and a couple of ridiculous turnovers, (cough)AP(cough), made it far more interesting than it should have been. I'll chalk it up to rustiness from the bye week and see how they do next week.

I guess that our governor here, Tim Pawlenty, is taking some crap about going out for the morning hunt on the deer opener a week ago and apparently wounding a deer but not finding it. Specifically, people are giving him crap for leaving it to others in his hunting camp to find the deer so he could make a scheduled news conference and a later event in Iowa. The others searched on Saturday and Sunday but came up empty. The Strib's Outdoors writer, Dennis Anderson, has a reasonably balanced account of the details. 

I'm not a deer hunter, but before I had a dog to help me find downed birds, there were probably three or four that I either killed or wounded yet didn't recover. It happens and it always made me feel bad, no matter how long I spent trying to find it. No ethical hunter wants to leave a wounded animal out there. Sometimes the animal doesn't cooperate though. My two cents is that there was nothing wrong with the governor letting his experienced brother and the others in the party take over the responsibility of trying to track that animal down. What matters to the animal, or respect for the animal(and it's about the animal, right?), is that the responsibility was attended to diligently. It's somewhat debatable I guess, but some of the louder hunters spouting off on this are so sanctimonious about it that it reminds me of those pastors on TV who are so certain of the only way to salvation, and we all know how that often turns out. Criminy, I'd rather walk the woods with the pastors.

The Leonid meteor showers are supposed to be peaking early tomorrow morning. The word here is the peak should be between 3:30 and 5:30. The forecast is for clear skies tonight, so maybe that sleep issue can come in handy.

Yep, It Was Loaded

Sorry, honey:

The wife of a deputy sheriff in northwestern Minnesota's Roseau County was treated in Grand Forks for a gunshot wound suffered in a hunting-related accident.

Chief Deputy Terry Bandemer says 27-year-old Michelle Cossentine was struck in the thigh by a bullet from her husband's rifle as she sat in the passenger seat of a vehicle Sunday as the couple returned home from hunting.

Bandemer says Cossentine's 29-year-old husband, Deputy Nathan Cossentine, was checking to see if the gun was loaded when it accidentally fired.

Apparently she was not seriously injured. He, however, will and should probably hear about that for the rest of his life, as in:

"Do we have to go to Joe and Carol's tonight?"

"You shot me!"

I'm not normally one to support such behavior, but that was a pretty major momentary lapse of reason. And if I was that chief deputy, for the next month Deputy Cossentine would be spending an hour with a range instructor before he begins his shift.

Veterans Day

My thanks today to all have served in the US military over the centuries, and especially those who are serving now and since 9/11. If I could change one thing over the last ten years or so it would be to have tried to re-enlist after 9/11. They may not have taken me back at that stage since I was 40 and fresh off of hand surgery, but I regret not trying.

And a special thanks to all of those citizen soldiers who have been called up over the last years and served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to their families. Now more than ever we count on their willingness to sacrifice and be a part of our armed forces.

Monday Jots

Busy, busy, busy. After a soggy and cold October, we have finally seen a decent stretch of weather and it felt good to get out and tackle a month's worth of yard work. There's still more to do, but I think I'll be able to get the yard put to bed for winter in reasonably good shape.

I can't let the 20th anniversary of the demise of the Berlin Wall pass without comment. It, and the Iron Curtain as a whole, was a glaring and constant reminder of the utter futility of statism and the pursuit of a utopia in this life. Even as a kid I was aware of its existence and the evil nature of the ideology that had to build something so monstrous in order to survive.  Later I read about the gulag and the secret police societies that lurked behind that dismal wall and curtain. They, and the evil that seemed ready to burst forth from them at any time, loomed over me for almost three decades of my life.

I remember coming home from work and watching the people from East Berlin pour through open gates and celebrate on top of parts of the wall. Even with the growing protests of the months before it was something that I had never expected to see in my lifetime. So I watched in utter amazement as the Soviet-bloc as a whole turned away from the options of '56 and '68 and embraced the death of an era. It was THE tipping point towards the end of one of the most loathsome empires in human history. I was surprised, and overjoyed.

On the FFL front, I'm up by 8 points going into tonight's game. I've got Brandon Marshall going while my opponent has the Denver kicker on his side. I need this one to get back above .500 and at least keep a share of the division lead.

I picked up the Teddy Roosevelt biography again while I was up north. I didn't make a lot of progress, but at least I'm past his childhood. The dude was pretty much a rich kid twerp. I'm hoping it gets better.

Antacid, alcohol, and headache medicines are all going to take a slight ding in sales in Minnesota with the news that Carlos Gomez has been traded to the Brewers for shortstop J.J. Hardy. If he lived next door to me I would probably like the kid, but as a Twin he drove me nuts. When he came on the scene in 2008 I was dazzled by his speed on the bases and in the field and the first thing I thought I saw was the second coming of Ricky Henderson and the Twins' lead-off man of the future. Hahaha, what was I smoking? Somebody slip something into my Marlboro Reds?  There were only two problems with that scenario: The dude can't hit consistently, and while he does have tremendous speed on the bases, the next gear past overdrive that he has is "brain fart", and that baby has seen plenty of action the last two years. I would rather see the Twins give him one more year to develop, but the Twins have infield problems that they need to solve and maybe this is a start in the right direction. I don't know too much about Hardy, so no opinion yet.

Bye week for the Vikes yesterday. Brad Childress is starting to look like a genius for bringing in Brett Favre. I'm deeply worried that this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

Back To Reality

Well, it's back to reality I guess. Though I did come up with a theory while I was up north that the actual reality is there and this is all just some bullshit construct. It was deep, I'm telling you.

No luck as far getting any grouse and now I cede the woods to the deer hunters for the next three weeks. I know some fine and responsible deer hunters, but I also know a few bozos. You can paint me from head to toe in blaze orange and I'm still not going to walk any public land during the firearms deer hunting season.

I saw lots of deer, mostly along the roads. I had one close call on I-35 last night just north of Sandstone when a deer crossed the road right in front of me. Thankfully it didn't panic and stop in the road and it bounded off into the night. I had slowed from 70 to about 55 and the car coming up from behind me didn't even slow down. It blew past in the left lane doing about 80. I remember being that stupid. And trust me, this time of year in Minnesota, with the deer moving like crazy, it's stupid to be speeding along on any road at night. I guess the odds are that any given driver will not hit a deer, but I'd rather nudge those odds a little more in my favor and get home with my vehicle in one piece.

It was pretty much cold, drizzly, and windy the whole time. The woods of northeastern Minnesota are not just wet, they are downright soggy. I dressed for it and I didn't mind it so much, but I think it had the birds pretty much hunkered down. It did make it the perfect weather to end the day by coming back to the cabin for a sauna, stew from the crockpot, and watching a movie by the fire.

Oh well. Time to get back up to speed I guess. I see the evil empire has won the series and that the usual bullshit artists are as hard at work as ever on Memeorandum.

Reality sucks.

Not So Bad

At halftime of yesterday's Vikes-Packers game I decided to take a little walk, not hunting, just a walk down the road. The weather was a bleak rain and sleet mix and it hit me pretty hard that Sammy wasn't with me. Bleak. A Vikings win, a sauna, and a relaxing evening by the fire took most of the melancholy away, but I was kind of dreading this morning's first hunting session without Sammy.

It wasn't that bad, so I think I must have gotten most of it out my system yesterday. It still felt strange though, to be out in the woods truly alone for the first time in 11 years. There were lots of little things that I missed like the rituals of putting her blaze orange collar on her or letting her get the scent of the grouse tail I keep in my ammo box. I missed watching her work the sides of the trail and then dart into the woods when she got some kind of scent. There's something bigger that I can't quite fully articulate yet...it's on the tip of my consciousness. Maybe later.